Tuesday, 08 April 2014

I've never really been particularly interested in bees, they were always Dad's gig, and that whole bee suit thing was kind of alarming.

When we started talking about moving back down here to the farm, Dad asked if we wanted to take over his hives. We fart-arsed around and spent yet another year not moving until finally Dad sold his hives - he'd had enough, he'd had them since he was sixteen.

About a month later we decided to move.

Those beehives now belong to a very good friend of ours, let's call her Shaztown, and those bees are called Malcolm's Cranky Bees. No reflection on Dad of course, and Shaztown has other (less cranky) hives she's aquired. But every time she handles Malcolm's Cranky Bees they give her grief. So we don't miss them.

Adam has done a bee course and has two hives. He adores his bees. And we adore their honey. We lost a hive over summer, and he ordered a replacement starter hive months ago. Of course it was ready to be picked up when he was away recently, and Dad was also away. Shaztown was working. I had to pick it up.

Which was fine until I arrived at the bee place and the lovely bee man brought out an enclosed mesh box buzzing with 1000 bees and a queen, and there were at least another 100 bees hanging on the outside of the box. "Put it in your boot" was the bee man's instruction. I drive a station wagon. Not being wild about driving in a car with bees flying all around, I put a hessian sack over the box and hoped for the best. Which sufficed, the bees were calm and not in the slightest bit cranky.

At home, I had to PUT MY HAND IN THE MESH BEE BOX and pull out the queen bee excluder and uncap it, so she could eat her way out of it, join her hive and start laying eggs. I couldn't wear gloves but I did put on the alarming head gear. Anyway, in the process of doing this, successfully, with no stings, I became at one with the bees. They. Are. Amazing.

Amazing.

Do you know when they leave the hive they fly in patterns that communicate landmarks to each other? About where the good pollen is and how to get there? AMAZING.

Monday, 05 August 2013

Well hello! It feels like a year since I've been around here. A year's worth of stuff has whizzed by, surely. Phonecalls, emails, planning planting weeding baking school-run laundry market after market, biscuit after biscuit and then one afternoon I answer my phone and it's the NSW Food Authority telling me they've found my whole-egg custard for sale at our local food co-op and that I'm selling it illegally without a dairy processors license. Withdraw the product from sale until licensed. Crap!

Not only did I have stock in the fridge, a lot, for the next market at Berry, but we'd been talking that week to a big potential supplier and word is going around and you know, it's really good! and selling really well and looking very likely to overtake bikkies for us at some stage in terms of sales. It's a winner. And apparently illegal.

"After a warning from the Food Authority, we're not able to sell our whole egg custard until we apply for a Dairy Processors License. So this weekend we'll be at Berry Markets with a new product: fortune telling. Your fortune told for $7, comes with free whole egg custard."

And that's what I did. I told fortunes, gave away custard and hung onto my hat thinking the Food Authority was going to show up at any moment, make a scene and confiscate my cooler. Or worse, fine me. But they didn't. Instead, supporters showed up. Lots of them. Friends and long-term and brand-new customers. Other farmers. That little facebook post was shared so many times that it has been seen by almost 17,000 people. 17,000! One farming friend, Kel, who makes gelato locally out of his own fabulous cows milk offered to include us under his Dairy Processors license and include the custard in his Food Safety plan, if we wanted to make it at his place.

I felt enveloped in an extended communal hug. You awesome people.

And I realised that it doesn't matter how small we are, you and me, we can do anything. We're in this together. This food, this fight, it has significance for lots of people, not just round our dinner table. Which is great, because while we might have resolved the Dairy licence, we're going to be jumping through beauracratic hoops for a while yet.

Oh yes, resolved. We're naturally rule followers rather than renegades over here, so we will be applying for a Dairy Licence. And we'll sell honey yoghurt made from Kel's milk and our honey too. Win. But in the meantime, we are allowed to sell our custard directly, just not wholesale. So that's what we'll do.

And meanwhile, our commercial kitchen in the dairy is coming together. Ovens are here, fridges found, benches and windows and doors ordered, and there's dishwashers and plantetary mixers on Adam's eBay watchlists. I've picked the flooring and we're waiting for the electrician. It's very exciting. Because not only will we be operating from here rather than lugging everything in and out of the rented commercial kitchen in town, we'll be running on-farm cooking classes and cool food-making workshops and next door in the old workshop there'll be a little farm shop. Come and visit!

For all the believers, I wish you general awesomeness. Without you we're just a tiny farm growing some stuff. But with you, with your arms around us, we're a good idea going places. Thank you.

Monday, 08 July 2013

... chilling out after a big weekend of markets (Berry! Wonderful! Have I told you how much I love doing produce markets?!)

... being on school holidays

... catching up with lovely friends we haven't seen for ages

... penning in the roosters, ready for their one bad day tomorrow. Fourteen! Fourteen lovely Plymouth Rock roosters, that's too many in one flock! They don't keep me awake but they do wake up Adam. We gave a couple away and the rest are destined for the pot, eventually.

... building a no-dig bed, or two. I am very lucky that right now we have a dump truck's worth of matured horse manure delivered last week down next to the market garden and a building site with piles of glorious topsoil handy. I laid down newspaper and cardboard yesterday afternoon and watered it well. Adam wheelbarrowed a few loads of manure and topsoil for me and we spread it on top. Dad showed up with the tractor this morning, first with a bucket filled with compost, the second time with topsoil. They make it very easy for me, I'm very grateful. This afternoon we have onions in one and some late brassicas in the other (which were supposed to have been transplanted in April!) We'll see.

... dreaming of glasshouses.

... remembering the commercial kitchen needs to come before a glasshouse on the list!!

... moving the piglets to the pumpkin patch, to dig it up before I put potatoes in.

They found some I missed!

Happier than a pig in mud.

... harvesting ginger! More on that shortly!

... finishing a beanie.

Hope you've had a cracking day. There's also nothing better at the end of the day than knowing there's a good novel waiting, right? I only read about two pages a night before I conk out, but I'm loving Burial Rites by Hannah Kent at the moment, it's truly gorgeously written.

Sunday, 19 May 2013

We had a cracker of a weekend, highlighted by an out-of-the-park record breaking market day yesterday. Out of the park.

We're overwhelmed by the support we receive locally and further afield, and were humbled by the droves of people that showed up yesterday and bought our pork, and chicken, and honey, and egg custard and liver pâté and every single bikkie on the stall. It was amazing.

If you were one of those people, thank you. Occasionally we wonder if off-farm jobs would be the ticket. We come close to hitting the wall and we panic and wonder what the hell we're doing messing around with chickens. And then we have a stellar day like yesterday and it all becomes clear and we sit around cooking up new horizons. We're pretty inspired over here today. Thank you.

Because ultimately what we're attempting to do is to hand over this little farm, solvent, to the next generation. To not be the ones to pack it in altogether because the value of the land is worth so much more than the value of the food we can grow on it.

Tuesday, 30 April 2013

Every farm has sheds. Sheds that are full of stuff because as any farmer will tell you, you can't throw anything away. There is some significant hoarding going on round here. Fence posts in piles, insulators, bath tubs, old egg crates. You never know when you'll need them again.

When I started the bikkie business I asked Dad if he had any old boxes I could use on the market stall. Did he ever! Old wooden egg boxes with my great grandfather's name stenciled on the side came out of a shed. Gorgeous old ammunition boxes appeared. Thank you, shed.

Recently when we were changing our chicken brooder arrangements, we had a need for a tall, long flexible bit of metal. Ta da! Out of a shed came an ancient swimming pool we had as kids, built on one long bit of tall and flexible metal. Perfect. Dad had hung onto that for thirty years in case he needed it, and it was perfect for the new brooder. Lucky us.

Sometimes the amount of stuff intimidates me, I think if we need to clear out a shed for any reason (like finding a home for the pallet of egg cartons or something sensible) we'll go in and never come out. One of the unusual things about a family farm that never actually changes hands is that stuff really never gets cleaned up and chucked away. Behind this deceased trailer is another much older deceased trailer. It's like the bones of the farm are visible.

See this cement post on it's side? It's one of the original Buena Vista gateposts. Now a convenient seat for small people waiting for the motorbike to pick them up.

Oh look. There's a long wooden box in case family farming gets a bit much for anyone and someone needs to be disposed of.

This rusty thing below is a wheat cracker, which they used when they grew and cracked the wheat for the chickens. Cool hey!

And this is a corn shucker, which takes the kernals off the corn cob. I'd so love to see if we could get this working.

Nothing goes to waste. You never know when a drum will need to become a dog kennel.

Monday, 29 April 2013

It was only three days ago that I suggested to Ad that we Roundup the organic market garden. (How's that for full disclosure? No one's perfect. Least of all round here.)

We'd started so well. The pigs went in last Autumn. They dug it up beautifully. Then there was a delay in the completion of their new digs up the hill and after the kikuyu grass was all gone, the weeds came back. Pigs don't eat weeds. The weeds grew tall and lush. We're rookies when it comes to clearing and cultivating and I kept looking at those weeds and wondered how we'd clear the paddock. Oh, we had lots of advice. Mostly chemical. Because of course if we just slash it and mulch it we'll just dig those weeds back in. So we need to clear it by hand. When I say 'we', I haven't done much clearing. When I suggested Roundup, Adam was the most shocked I've seen him in ages. He said something along the lines of, sure, why don't we just become Monsanto reps while we're at it? then, are you kidding? then, you're not kidding. Then, please don't ever suggest spraying Roundup again. We're farming organically. There's your hoe, honey.

And then he went out and hired some expensive labour.

I go on record to declare Uncle Adam is fired from striking enterprise bargaining arrangements with nephews or children. Or maybe I should just go work for him. Conditions were conducive to chatting. Although I have to hand it to them, they worked pretty hard (at times.)

Tuesday, 23 April 2013

You know we've been kicking along here on the farm for a year, running the market stall for six months ahead of that. We're having a good go at figuring it out, making a living farming on a very small acreage, rather than just homesteading and living sustainably which frankly would be cheaper.

A lovely lady who is in charge of the meat puchasing for an organic buying club contacted me recently about chickens, and she and her friend and six children between them showed up today to pick up an entire batch of freshly processed pastured free-range chickens.

We had a walk around the farm and chatted about sustainable food and small farms and chickens and pigs and coffee. It was lovely. And for the first time (maybe I'm really very slow) I felt part of something bigger. When we started here we were so busy running to try and keep livestock alive and figure out what we're supposed to plant when and baking baking baking that I never really articulated our reason for being, you know? Yes, we wanted to grow and raise clean food for our own family but now we're raising it for lots of other people's families and that is super cool. I felt a little bit proud of that for the first time today.

Because instead of just complaining about the supermarkets which I've done a lot of, we're actually offering an alternative. Little bit proud.

It's school holidays. While Adam was at the abattoir we weeded self-seeded tomatoes out of the carrots and picked all the green beans in the house vegie garden. We cut back the basil (dramatically) and made a lot of pesto.

You can see the bottom of our menu board here. Here's the whole thing:

I never intended to blog this board otherwise I might have subconsciously put slightly flasher meals on this week. This board is mainly for Henry who always likes to know what his next meal is. Sometimes people edit it - I think Dad rubbed off the green beans on Friday when I had a sudden mad desire for wombok salad with the trout. The board works well. I get a lot of feedback from the smallies about it.

I can tell you for sure there'll be basil pesto all over next week's menu. Pesto and beans. Seven different ways.

Thanks for hanging out with us on this ride of ours. I appreciate your company.

Thursday, 18 April 2013

This farm has always had beehives. Well not always always, but Dad was maybe twelve when he got his first hive? That's some years (due respect and all.)

In the bee stakes I'm a bit of an observer, not because I'm not riveted by the wee things, I think they're awesome and I'm a huge honey fan, but bees were something Adam particularly wanted to do, so he does the bees.

A week or so ago, we... er... they robbed our hives for the first time. Dad had sold his hives and honey extractor to someone before we decided to move down here. That someone turned out to be an awesome chick called Sharon who we found by accident and totally love. She's hilarious. Turns out Dad's hives are kinda cranky, maybe because they're elderly and established. They're safely housed in Berry and in Shaz's capable hands - they only occasionally get knocked over by a sheep - and our two new hives have been humming along peacefully here since September.

Sharon returned Dad's extractor to us though, which was truly awesome because it's a little bit of farm history. And it still works well.

See Adam's right hand in the photos above? Quite swollen? Three bee stings, right on top of each other. Wasn't bothering him at this point but by evening it was incredibly itchy and pretty sore. I went to the chemist and got him some antihistemine to help the itch. I'd forgotten, and so had he, that he really shouldn't take antihistemine. It knocks him out.

I was cleaning up after dinner and heard a loud thump and discovered him in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. I tried not to panic, he looked completely unconscious, but he was very zen, said he hadn't felt a thing, he had just thought he was at the bottom when he had about eight steps left to go. Generally unharmed, just knocked out. No worries, put some honey on the sting next time. Or crushed garlic, or lavender oil. And no more antihistemine.

Sunday, 10 March 2013

They show up in November and December in pairs and gangs and occasionally solo, they pick all morning, stop for icey drinks and bikkies for morning tea, then some kind of delicious lunch put together by Mum. They span out around coffee trees with containers strapped to their waists on belts, and they pick all our coffee. They talk. They tell bad jokes. It's extremely convivial.

Adam and I offered to run the pick this last year, but Dad declined. The coffee is his gig for now. His friends are happily up and down the rows.

And afterwards, they're around the table for a big coffee-pickers dinner. It's a tradition, the pickers get bags of just-roasted beans and a big, social, end-of-season dinner.

We're so grateful for their helping hands.

This week we welcomed our very first Wwoofer (Willing Workers On Organic Farms). While we're not yet listed in the directory, Henry was wwoofing with our friends at Milkwood for the last two months, and seemed comfortable that we had no idea what we were doing, and keen to come and join in.

He's coped remarkably well with us, including being decked out "for a party" on his first night by the small girls who live here, with flowers and hair clips. He and Adam have done some awesome fencing over the last couple of days and we've fed him some yummy farm food. I think chicken processing is on the list for tomorrow.

Our other terrificly helping hand around here is a ballerina, likely to show up in the top paddock (she moves fast) or anywhere where the quad bike it. She can hear it from a great distance through walls and closed doors.